Best Dana-dodge™, ever

Well, someone is going to have to explain that as it went right over my head.

Maybe Dana is not simply cynical. Maybe this is the best analysis he can do.
Perhaps we should pity him, trying to make sense of a world that is far more complex than his apparent ability to analyse.

Dr. Tol,
I believe I looked at a powerpoint presentation of yours some time back that suggested that minor reductions in CO2 emissions are relatively easy or cheap but that the cost becomes progressively steeper the further you take the reductions. Am I remembering this right, and/or understanding it properly? My ignorant layman’s view was always that it seemed obvious that adaptation would be the cheapest way to go, but I’m an ignorant layman in this area.
BTW, thanks. I don’t care what Dr. Lewandowsky says about you, you’re all right. 😉

@Mark B
That is correct. The first bit of emission reduction costs very little. It is rapid and deep emission reduction costs that should get you worried.

Thanks Dr. Tol.

I’ve had exchanges with Nuticello (sic) before.
He has three very real problems with regard to his understanding and communication on climate change issues;
1) He actually isn’t very bright. Its not that he doesn’t try to understand. He simply isn’t capable. Some very complicated issues go right over his head. He isn’t capable of arguing the point because he doesn’t even understand it. Witness the above. He is clueless as to what you mean. Or, in the parlance common here; a liberal arts major.
2) He has absolute certainty with regard to the truth of the matter. Or, as you and I would call it; blind faith. There is no question in his mind. So you, in arguing against him, are either evil or stupid. Which is it? Yes, this is how his brain works. He isn’t concerned with your argument and to the extent he engages you at all, he’s just trying to work out if you are just too stupid to get it or actually evil incarnate.
3) He has no ethical concerns about lying, slandering, editing comments and stories on his website or just plain name calling when he is clearly in over his head. You see, he is in the right, so anything he does, which others may see as unethical or evil, is justified by his correct position on CAGW. Noble cause corruption as I’ve heard it referred to here.
This makes him a proper candidate to ignore. On every level. Don’t visit his site, don’t comment on stories he is involved with and most of all stop posting any news of or stories about him.
In short, if you ignore him he will go away.
He will never admit he’s wrong and he will always resort to slander and lies when cornered. Eventually he may figure out that he’s in the wrong but he still won’t admit to it. Instead he will pretend like he never cared about the CAGW issue and figure out some other cause to assuage his ego and make himself feel less dense.
I’ve dealt with his type before.

We are already spending 0.5% of GDP per year on green energy/climate change (which is a dead-weight loss) and it has not changed the CO2 emissions trajectory one iota.
Zero impact –> -0.5% of GDP/year
Do the math on what it takes to cut emissions by 50%. Sorry, there is no math here because we have no clue how much it will cost. $358 billion per year has got us nothing so far. 10 times Zero is still Zero.

Does anyone who has seen Dana Nuccitelli in person (as he speaks, behaves and interacts with others) think he is doing the Guardian and other media related stuff without full time mentoring assistance?
I have seen him in person at the 2013 Dec AGU meeting in San Francisco. I have witnessed his intellectual capability and interactive functionality first hand. Based on my first hand observation of him, I think he is monitored and coached continuously in real time by his non-skeptical blog associates in all his Guardian communications and related media matters.
Based on Tol’s comments/Tweets , I recommend to Dana Nuccitelli that he should fire any non-skeptical coaches and get some skeptical ones.
John

C.S. Lewis prophesied Our Dana in his brilliant dystopia-in-infancy novel, That Hideous Strength. Of character Mark Studdock, who had just written two newspaper columns full of manipulative propaganda spin and deception, Lewis wrote:
The more often he re-read the articles the better he liked them… It wasn’t as if he were taken in by the articles himself. He was writing with his tongue in his cheek—a phrase that somehow comforted him by making the whole thing appear like a practical joke. And anyway, if he didn’t do it, someone else would. And all the while the child inside him whispered how splendid and how triumphantly grown up it was to be sitting like this, so full of alcohol and yet not drunk, writing (with his tongue in his cheek) articles for great newspapers, against time, “with the printer’s devil at the door” and all the inner ring of the N.I.C.E. depending on him, and nobody ever again having the least right to consider him a nonentity or cipher.

Is anyone else curious as to where they get the money to pay for NUTicelli’s column?
As I understand it their finances are a mess and their biggest revenue sources are labor union donations, government job ads, and the BBC purchasing >10K copies per day. Could he be working for free (and being overpaid at that) or is his work being subsidized by Big Green?

Michael D says:
April 23, 2014 at 10:30 am
Stereolab is … like .. a band, right ?
I understand them to be a beat group, popular with the young and swinging generation. I’m not sure if they currently have a single in the hit parade but am told they are still considered to be a “happening” combo.